Annual Club Fair Day, one of the first weeks of the new school year, is when students involved in Mock Trial, the Dance Team, Intrinsic Art Club and a plethora of other school activities set up poster boards in the hallway outside of the cafeteria and advertise for students to join their clubs.
Throughout high school, people are encouraged to participate in many different extracurricular activities to help build their college resume, which many students in Solon feel pressured to do.
But, unfortunately, more and more these days, students are quitting the extracurricular activities that they love because they can’t manage having fun and keeping up their academic performance at the same time.
Students become so focused on grades that they lose out on having an appreciation for the little things in life that give them enjoyment.
This hits even harder when college admissions season comes around for seniors. Applying to college can sometimes feel like a full-time job. From learning and understanding how the CommonApp works, to actually filling it out, to writing my never ending supplementals, to applying for financial and scholarships and on and on into oblivion. It is not an easy task.
Many students tend to put aside all things they enjoy until the stressful work finally comes to an end. On top of this, some high school students stopped communicating with friends and hanging out with them altogether. This limitation in communication between peers can lead to some students becoming depressed. This stress can build up over the long school year, digging students deeper into depression.
As important as admissions are and getting them done in time, the little things in life are just as important. Students shouldn’t feel like they have to skip practices, skip out on hangouts and set aside all things until this period of stress is over.
Students should not have to make this decision between having fun in their lives or having good grades. A lot of the time, this stress comes from a lack of basic skills such as managing stress, prioritizing different responsibilities and scheduling your time.
Applying to college is not the only issue causing stress. Many students, as young freshmen, have jobs–some even have two. In order to be able to work, you need basic time management skills. Many parents fail to teach their kids these skills, leading to stress for students who are left without support.
Although Solon is known for being an amazing school of students who perform at high levels, many students today are procrastinators. They do not know how to manage their time. This issue can lead to poor work quality, difficulty setting and achieving goals, difficulty making decisions, missing deadlines, inability to organize multiple tasks, difficulty saying ‘no’ and more.
If students learned how to set aside time periods to get things done, procrastination and many of these negative effects could be avoided. And, extracurricular activities and hangouts with friends could still happen.
Students who have a good grasp of time management skills have lower levels of stress and anxiety, more self-control and better study engagement and habits. Students should not have to be forced to learn these skills when they start their first job or when they join too many extracurriculars, these skills should be taught in high school.
At Solon Middle School, there used to be a class you would take in seventh grade where you would learn skills such as time management, study habits, prioritizing responsibilities and more. The school district should have never gotten rid of this program.
At SHS, freshmen are required every Wednesday of the month to attend assemblies based on suicide, bullying and sex education in a program known as SHS Freshmen Mentoring. Although all these topics are very important, there are other topics that should be addressed in these meetings as well.
To combat the issue of students losing interest in their extracurricular activities and extreme stress, SHS could begin implementing presentations on how to combat stress and teachings on these integral, basic life skills during Freshman Mentoring.
While it may be difficult to implement the class into the SMS curriculum again, implementing teaching of these skills into the SHS Freshman Mentoring program would not be that difficult of a task. This is a framework already set in place to teach students important life skills.
Not only do these skills teach you how to succeed as a student, but they also teach you how to succeed in life. No matter if you’re going to college, into the workforce, or into the military, you need to know how to manage your time responsibly.
Solon School District needs to do a better job of helping students form and learn these key time management skills. In a world of growing student stress, time management skills are all the more important to be successful in the future.
